GORDON PARKS says consecutive lower-league campaigns were open goals for Rangers which should have been maximised to blood a new generation of Murray Park graduates.

FRANK MALONEY, or Kellie as she is now to be known, took sporting reinventions into new realms this week.

You could have knocked out many a pugilist with a feather on hearing the former boxing promoter is now living life as a woman.

For a guy once memorably nicknamed the Mental Midget by Don King to announce he was a girl was a jaw-dropper alright.

But it was another less successful transformation which struck a chord last weekend amid the tabloid revelations of Miss Maloney’s transgender status.

As Rangers lost their opener to Hearts, something more damning than defeat prevailed.

It was the much simpler matter of watching a club waste two years attempting a makeover only to realise it had failed.

Reinventing themselves on The Journey from the depths of League Two has been beyond them and as a club they are no longer comfortable in their own skin.

Ally McCoist has missed more chances to reinvent the team both in philosophy and a more youthful approach.

Consecutive lower-league campaigns were open goals which should have been maximised to blood a new generation of Murray Park graduates. Instead it was a confusing group of players which was the face of Rangers against the Jambos.

Hearts had five academy graduates in their starting XI. Rangers fielded just one.

Jordan McGhee, Kevin McHattie, Billy King, Dale Carrick and Sam Nicholson have spent years at Tynecastle being reared in a youth system which speaks for itself.

It’s a testament to the work of former academy director John Murray who is now scouring for talent in his current role as chief scout.

As for Murray Park? Lewis Macleod was the sole starter as the League One flag was unfurled by skipper Lee McCulloch on Sunday.

One scan of the team sheet illustrated a professional perversity which saw two groups of players poles apart in terms of where they are in the game.

Richard Foster’s still trying to master the basic arts of the game while Marius Zaliukas looks every inch the player whose limitations restricted him to no more than 15 games in a disastrous spell at Leeds last season.

Lee Wallace remains the kid with the world at his feet who now, at 27, gambled all of his career on Light Blue only for it to come up red.

For David Templeton read Lee Wallace and you can also throw Nicky Law into that mix.

McCoist’s perseverance with Ian Black was shown up by both Morgaro Gomis and Prince Buaben who showed the Rangers playmaker how to break up play and press the ball with the minimum of fuss while passing it forward with a sense of purpose.

The one last hurrah pairing of Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller deserves immunity from criticism due to services to the game, club and country but their presence in attack is another depressingly short-fix measure.

McCoist wasn’t asked to reinvent the wheel when he accepted the job as boss, he only had to realign it.

Hearts have unearthed Osman Sow and Alim Ozturk from nowhere and the pair shone, another sad indictment of the chief scout post at Murray Park which continues to be vacant.